1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a process of surface treatment, a surface treating device, a surface treated plate, an electro-optic device, and electronic equipment.
2. Background Art
Wiring used for electronic circuits or integrated circuits is manufactured, for example, by a photolithography method. In the photolithography method, the wiring is formed by applying photosensitive material called resist on a plate, on which a conductive film is applied in advance, developing by irradiating a circuit pattern, and etching the conductive film according to a resist pattern. The lithography method requires large scale equipment and complex processes such as a vacuum device, and the material usage efficiency is only several percent. Therefore, most of the material has to be put on the shelf, and hence it requires high manufacturing costs.
Alternatively, there is proposed a wiring pattern forming process using a process of discharging liquid drops, which is a so-called inkjet method, in which liquid material is discharged in the form of liquid drops from a liquid drop discharging head (For example, see U.S. Pat. No. 5,132,248). In this method, ink for a wiring pattern, which is functional liquid containing conductive fine particles such as metal particles disposed therein is applied directly to the plate as a pattern, which is converted into a conductive film pattern by subsequently performing heat treatment or laser irradiation. This method has advantages such that photolithography is no longer necessary, and hence the process is significantly simplified, and at the same time, the amount of material to be used may be reduced.
In order to perform conductive film wiring by the inkjet method adequately, a process of selectively discharging liquid material by the inkjet method onto a liquid preferring (hydrophilic) portion of a plate, on which a pattern of a liquid rejecting portion (hydrophobic) and the liquid preferring portion is formed in advance, is proposed. In this case, since liquid containing the conductive fine particles dispersed therein tends to be trapped on the liquid preferring portion, formation of wiring with positional accuracy is achieved without forming a bank.
In this case, as a process of providing the hydrophobic property, a process of forming a liquid rejecting unimolecular film such as a self-organized film formed of an organic molecule on the surface of the plate, and a process of forming a fluorinated polymerized film on the surface of the plate, such as a plasma processing generating fluorocarbon contained compound as a reactive gas are known.
On the other hand, as a process of providing the hydrophilic property, a process of disrupting the liquid rejecting film once formed by irradiating ultraviolet light after liquid rejecting finishing is known.
However, there are problems as shown below.
In the case where a film pattern is formed using a plate on which the hydrophilic property or the hydrophobic property is provided, it is necessary to control the contact angle between the liquid member and the plate to be substantially uniform. This is because variations in hydrophilic property on the plate affect uniformity of dot diameter, that is, the line width or the film thickness.
However, in recent years, as the plate is upsized (enlarged), variations in hydrophilic property on the surface of the plate increase correspondingly. Therefore, there is fear that the contact angle between liquid and the plate cannot be controlled to be uniform.
In view of such points described above, it is an object of the present invention to provide a process of surface treatment in which the contact angle between the liquid member and the plate can be uniformly controlled even with the large size plate, a surface treating device, a surface treated plate, and an electro-optic device and electronic equipment having the surface treated plate.